It’s Thursday afternoon, you’re driving home from work, and you get a text message. For some strange reason, you think that said text message is more important than controlling a two thousand kilogram piece of steel moving at 60 kilometers per hour. So you pick up your phone and boom, you run someone over. Samsung wants to prevent this, so they’re launching an app called “Eyes on the Road”. It’s a very simple app. All you do is turn it on once. When it detects that you’re moving faster than 20 kilometers per hour, it makes sure to hide all incoming calls, text messages, and “social media notifications” from you until you’ve arrived at your destination.
Who else is building apps like this? Motorola has Moto Assist. Microsoft does something similar with Windows Phone. And I’m not sure about the other players. This should come as a standard feature in my opinion. Never mind that I don’t drive anymore, I’d rather have a phone automatically turn on some sort of safety mode when I’m in a bus or on a subway and then turn it off manually than trust people with figuring out how to turn this on by themselves. Why is this app launching in Singapore? Because that’s apparently some sort of hotbed for mobile phone related accidents. As someone who has been to Singapore, I can attest to the fact that people there are addicted to their phones. I even saw people walking down the street using a laptop! So yeah, good on you, Samsung.
